How to Find the Perfect Monologue
While school drama departments and community theaters across the country are currently on hiatus, what better time to hone your acting chops than by identifying and practicing monologues you can use for future auditions and sizzle reels?
We typically think of auditions as the cold reading of a script onstage in order for a director to assemble the best possible cast. Nowadays, however, you’ll more likely be asked to memorize a piece of your own choosing or, in the case of college admissions, submit a video for evaluation. There’s a right and a wrong way to do this. These 10 tips will help you make smart decisions that will show off your talent in the best light.
If you’re auditioning in person for a specific play, never choose a monologue from that play. Why? Because it’s hard to distinguish yourself when 29 other people are using exactly the same material. Directors are only human; they tend to tune out after the third or fourth one, especially if they’ve been hearing these theatrical chestnuts ad nauseum ever since their directorial careers began. I also caution against “dressing” for a role or bringing props to subliminally influence a casting decision. In my own experience, the only thing this projects is that you’re trying much too hard.
Comedy is almost always preferable to drama when choosing a short audition piece. The objective is to put the decision-maker at ease. Making them smile or even chuckle is a better strategy than pinning their ears back with high-decibel shouting, raging and flailing your arms as you angrily pace the stage. Don’t go with a comedic monologue, however, if you’re just not a naturally funny person. Being an understated, sophisticated wit is a smarter choice than trying to force a laugh, especially if a competitive audition experience is already fraught with tension.
Don’t write your own material. Yes, I know. You want to demonstrate you’re as accomplished a playwright as you are an actor but you mustn’t lose sight of why you are actually there: to be an actor. Self-written works also tend to fall into the category of folksy storytelling, bloviating and whiney musing—none of which will knock a director’s socks off.
For longer audition pieces, look at monologues which demonstrate a range of emotions. You only have a brief window of opportunity to make a stellar impression. Consider a piece that allows you to move through, for example, the seven stages of grief: shock, denial, anger, bargaining, guilt, depression, and hope. Practice in front of the mirror to ensure your facial expressions and body language are consistent with the words themselves. If you’re putting together multiple pieces for a sizzle reel, strike a balance between monologues that are light vs. dark, contemporary vs. classic.
There’s no shortage of monologue collections on the market. Some are standalone pieces, others are extracted from full plays. If it’s a standalone monologue, approach it as you would its own mini-play. Although you only have a short glimpse of what makes this character tick, it’s incumbent upon you to create a background profile so as to understand the context of what the speaker is trying to accomplish, to risk or even to fight for. If you’re reading an extract, don’t just memorize the words and believe you’ve accomplished anything. You need to avail yourself of the full text in order to appreciate the character’s relationships with others in the story as well as his/her emotional state in the chronological placement of the speech.
If you’re auditioning in person, be keenly aware of your body and how it moves. Graceful? Frenetic? Stealthy? Nervously? Will you be addressing all of your lines through the fourth wall or to a character onstage we can’t see? If it’s the former, direct your gaze and words toward the middle of the house rather than at the director. (Directors really don’t like being stared down.) If it’s the latter, you need to steadfastly focus and convince us of where this other character is and what s/he is doing. This is not unlike movies which utilize a lot of CGI; during a shoot, actors are often required to address their lines to a suspended tennis ball since the animation/special effects aren’t filled in until later.
If you’re videotaping your monologue or doing a Zoom production, all of the attention is going to be on your face, not your whole body. Accordingly, every emotion you want to convey will have to be done through your face and your voice. Caution: If you’re used to flitting around, this will result in your moving in and out of the frame. Likewise, gestures that would otherwise seem incidental on a stage (i.e., throwing your hands in the air) are magnified on a small screen and come across as melodramatic. You’ll also want to make sure you’re doing your taping against a neutral or black background. Nothing should detract from you, the star!
Choose age-appropriate material. Yes, it’s true that high school students are often called upon to don grey wigs and hunch over to play septuagenarians. An audition monologue is different, though. It’s the opportunity to show what you can do when you’re portraying someone who is close to your own age. Further, the issues and themes explored in an age-appropriate teen monologue will resonate more deeply in your psyche than the experiences of adults many times removed from your generation. As an example, take a look at my second collection of teen monologues penned for Silver Birchington Plays in the UK. These scripts explore themes of family relationships, anorexia, romance, school violence, and trying to act “normal” in the least normal of modern times.
Choose a monologue which is active rather than static. You should be able to freely vary the pace, energy and vocal dynamics. A monologue that runs like a blah-blah-blah flat-line from start to finish just isn’t going to elicit excitement.
A great audition monologue should talk to the audience, not at them. In order to accomplish this, you need to pick material with which you feel a personal connection. What areas of common ground do you feel you have with the character you’re portraying? What events in your own life mirror the events conveyed in the material? How would you put the monologue into your own words without losing any of its original intention? When you can do this easily, you’ll know you’ve found the perfect showcase for your unique skill sets as an actor.
Meet the Author, Christina Hamlett
Former actress and theatre director Christina Hamlett is an award-winning author whose credits to date include 43 books, 209 stage plays, and squillions of articles and interviews. She is also a script consultant for stage and screen and a professional ghostwriter.